


Storms

by redredribbons



Category: Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Developing Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Nightmares, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 09:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redredribbons/pseuds/redredribbons
Summary: The Symbiote struggles to understand human habits and biorhythms. Especially Eddie's, when his own brain seems intent on sabotaging him.





	Storms

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't set at any specific point in canon-- just early on in Eddie and Venom's relationship, when they are still learning about each other.

The Symbiote was an ancient being. It had traveled the stars. It had taken hosts of many species. Each was unique and came with its own array of physiological eccentricities. None were quite like humans, however: small delicate beings who spent nearly half of each planetary rotation in a state of unconsciousness. 

 

With the Symbiote’s previous host-- it didn’t like to contaminate its current bond with thoughts of his name-- this had been a consistent routine. He had done the same things every night at the same time. He’d take off his clothes, clean his body and mouth, put on a different type of clothes, and lay down. Sleep would follow effortlessly. 

 

Eddie wasn’t like this at all. 

 

Eddie usually remembered to wash, but sometimes he was too desperate to escape his own thoughts. He would barely manage to strip off his clothes before throwing himself into his bed, as if it could protect him. The next day he wouldn’t leave it until the sun was high overhead. Other nights he was restless and afraid. On nights like this his bed was no longer a sanctuary but a prison. He fled it in favor of pacing, push-ups on the dusty floor, hunkering in the glow of a small desk lamp as his pen scratched words in one of a dozen ratty notebooks. When the sun came up Eddie would spend the rest of the day in a fog while his body moved on autopilot. Though the Symbiote had no need for sleep it knew that humans required it in order to survive. Eddie’s stubborn refusal made no sense. 

 

This back-and-forth had gone on for many nights now. Could Eddie not feel the sluggishness of his neurons, the ache in his cells? Eddie was strong for a human, but his body was ruled by the same chemistry as any other. The Symbiote didn’t know how long a human could go on like this. It considered intervention: a gentle brush across the right clusters in Eddie’s brain would send him into deep sleep. 

 

But perhaps tonight would be different, and that wouldn’t be necessary. The sun had only been down for a short time when Eddie began his routine for sleeping. The Symbiote purred its approval at the crisp scent of his mouth. Ghostly claws brushed across Eddie’s damp hair when he flopped into bed.

 

“I know”, Eddie murmured, stretching onto his back, “I need to be better about this whole sleep thing.”

 

_Our bond won’t last if your body and brain are too weak to sustain it._

 

Eddie gave a quiet huff of laughter. “Listen, I’ve got a long way to go before I’m ‘too weak’ to do anything. I-- _we_ \-- have lived through a lot worse than being tired.”

 

The Symbiote decided against arguing; that would only wind Eddie up again. Instead it diffused through his chest where it settled into the vibrations of his slowing heartbeat. 

 

Though time on a human scale was meaningless to the Symbiote, it seemed very little had passed before Eddie’s mind sank into temporary oblivion. His body busied itself with self-repair at the cellular level, and the Symbiote dispersed to assist. Eddie had been so threadbare, so brittle, when they found each other. The Symbiote never wanted to feel him like that again. Such an ideal host was a rare find, one who not only understood but welcomed the primordial instinct to bond. Eddie was so receptive, his need so intense. He welcomed its presence in his consciousness. 

 

As the Symbiote worked, its receptors tingled at the approach of oncoming neurochemical storms. The first time the Symbiote had experienced this with a human had been alarming. A sudden flurry of brain activity while the body lay still and unaware seemed maladaptive. But with its previous host, the Symbiote soon learned that the activity was nothing more than a harmless parade of random images and feelings, only loosely modeled on reality. 

 

Eddie, however, was different in this way also. His storms were darker. The images, and the emotions they elicited, were cold and violent. Initially the Symbiote had recoiled from them, but over time it grew concerned that these painful visions would interfere with Eddie’s functioning. Why would Eddie’s own brain generate images that disturbed him so? What did they mean? If the Symbiote understood, perhaps it could make them go away. 

 

So tonight, when the storm began, the Symbiote didn’t retreat. It resolved to sit through this with Eddie, even if hurt. Especially if it hurt.

 

It allowed its senses to be swept up into Eddie’s, seeing through his unseeing eyes. Eddie lay prone, just like in reality, but he was no longer in his bed. Instead of sheets, there was dirt pressing into his back. The sky was a small rectangle far overhead, and the smell of damp earth towered around and above him. Involuntary panic lit up his nerves. He had to get _out_. But his limbs were numb, dead weights. The rectangle of sky above him was broken by a series of silent figures staring down at him. They appeared, one by one, and Eddie’s reaction to each of them felt like an electric shock. The Symbiote had never seen them before, but it knew them because Eddie did. 

 

First came a tired man with dead eyes: Eddie’s father. He was joined by a bored young girl: Eddie’s sister. Then a woman in sharp-looking business attire, her jaw tight, gaze resolutely forward. Anne. _Anne!_ The pain was like a lash, a soundless scream, and Eddie’s muscles spasmed. The Symbiote flinched, but it was determined. It had to know. More figures gathered, who had once been Eddie’s friends and co-workers. 

 

The weight of dread made Eddie’s breathing shallow and quick. He had just opened his mouth to cry out for help when the first shovelful of dirt landed on his face. His head tossed against his pillow. It was impossible to tell which of the figures looming above started it, but the others immediately joined in. Soil rained down on him and he gave up trying to scream when it began to fill his mouth. It tickled in his nostrils like a sneeze, then like drowning. One final spectator appeared to watch in silence: unmistakeable in red and blue, even through eyes blurred by tears. The Symbiote knew this wasn’t real-- but just as Eddie’s agony _felt_ real, so did the Symbiote’s sick surge of longing. And with that, it saw itself: a shadow closing in above Eddie, blotting out the last remnants of light and air...

 

Eddie lurched awake with a ragged shout. He clawed at his face and sucked down gulps of oxygen. Though he’d barely moved, his heart hammered in his chest. The Symbiote tasted the adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. Underpinning it all was the ache of melancholy. Of inevitability. The Symbiote saw so many empty places inside him, all shaped like the people from the dream. 

 

_Wasn’t real._

 

Eddie froze when that rustling voice echoed in the chasm of his mind. The storm hadn’t passed yet. 

 

_Wasn’t real,_ the Symbiote repeated, to itself as much to Eddie. It hated what it had seen in Eddie’s subconscious, and how it had reacted. It hated that Eddie had seen, too. _I’m here. With you._

 

“Then let me see you.” Eddie’s lips almost couldn’t shape the words.

 

_But we’re closest like this. Want to be close to you._

 

“Please.”His voice was a broken rasp. 

 

The Symbiote didn’t understand. There was no greater intimacy than being woven through the very fiber of its host’s being. Becoming a part of him. But that did little to calm Eddie, who trembled alone in his bed. The Symbiote followed the current of Eddie’s emotions to his buried thoughts, the ones that never made it to words at all.

 

_Touch_ , the Symbiote realized. Different from the fusion of their combined form. This thought was answered with the pull of yearning. The Symbiote couldn’t have resisted it any more than it could have resisted gravity: the overwhelming desire to soothe and protect its host. And something else, just with Eddie. A thread of light between them. A fireplace in a dark hallway.

 

The Symbiote gathered itself and seeped upward. Black specks appeared on Eddie’s skin, which expanded into droplets, then pools. Eddie took a deep breath as the creature’s weight settled onto his chest. It materialized a face because it knew Eddie liked that, despite its face being nothing like his. The rest of its mass oozed across Eddie’s torso under the sheets. It studied him, head cocked to one side, tongue hanging free. The Symbiote knew little of human facial expressions, but Eddie looked different than he did in the light of day, when he was surrounded by the world. So soft and open and vulnerable. This was how Eddie should look all the time, the Symbiote resolved. It curled itself around him a little tighter.

 

Eddie made a muffled sound, like a groan, but not pain. “You’re the only one who’s still here, you know that?”

 

Spoken words were expected, the Symbiote knew, even if words were always too simple. “Always. You are... a good host to me.”

 

It rippled in surprise when it felt Eddie’s hands on it. Pressing, exploring, gentle and firm. None of its previous hosts had done this and the sensation was a little strange. Not unpleasant, though-- especially when Eddie’s anxiety began to melt away. 

 

“Will you stay? Like this, I mean. Outside me,” Eddie whispered. A kind of warmth, not physical, radiated from him as he admired the Symbiote through sleepy eyes. Their distinctness was, objectively, not ideal for a bond. But it _was_ ideal for keeping Eddie’s hands where they were, for working the tension out of his muscles, for basking in that warmth. Perhaps this was a method of bonding unique to humans. Or unique to Eddie. Perhaps the bond was Eddie’s scent in calmness, the fragility of the skin where his neck met his jawbone and the scent was strongest. The way he sighed when the Symbiote pressed its face there. 

 

“Thanks,” Eddie murmured against the smooth-soft darkness in his arms. At first the Symbiote found it unnerving to not be _within_ Eddie, but at least it could still feel the steady rhythm of his heart and breath. Eddie’s stillness comforted it, and it watched over him as he dreamed of the stars.


End file.
